He nodded. "Leave these with me. If I have questions, we'll talk."
That day, he added me on WhatsApp. His initiative, not mine.
On my way out, his assistant Alfred Chavez said, "Forty-four firms sent representatives. You're the first one he's given his personal contact to."
I rushed back to the office, buzzing with excitement, and reported everything to Edmund.
No excitement. No praise.
He didn't even look up.
"You want to waste your time chasing pipe dreams, that's your business. I'm not going to the boss with some half-baked lead and getting chewed out for it."
But the moment the project was locked in, he was the first one in Mr. Donaldson's office to claim credit.
"Mr. Donaldson, the Cloudridge project came through because I led the team and ground out every last detail."
One sentence. A full year of my sweat and sleepless nights, reduced to a stepping stone under his feet.
I selected the files, compressed them, and uploaded everything to my personal cloud.
Then I deleted them. Permanently.
I packaged up the basic Cloudridge documents and sent them to Kenneth.
Ten minutes later, Kenneth came storming out of the director's office and marched straight to my desk.